In the interconnection of electrical conductors, a number of differnt terminations are often encountered at the same location. In the telephone industry, for example, the conductors of the line cord of a telephone set have been terminated by spade-tip terminals. On the other hand, the conductors of the telephone wire installed on the surface or within the walls of a building have been stripped to provide a bare-ended termination. In the past, these two terminations have been interconnected by being placed under the head of a screw terminal that was part of either a surface mounted or flush mounted connecting block.
More recently, a snap-on terminal of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,188,505, which issued to R. J. O'Connor on Feb. 12, 1980, has been introduced. This terminal snaps onto the head of a screw terminal, and one use of the snap-on terminal has been to permit a customer to add a modular jack enclosure to the connecting block. The customer is then able to install any telephone having a modular plug-ended line cord. Thus, it is seen that with these three types of terminations, the screw terminal continues to serve as an adequate connector in the telephone industry.
Residential customers are now being allowed to install telephone wire from the entry point of a telephone line into their dwelling unit or from any point within their dwelling unit where existing telephone wire may be accessed. This telephone wire typically comprises a plastic sheath surrounding a group of individually insulated conductors. Consequently, for the customer to use the existing connector hardware, it is necessary once the sheath has been removed, for the customer to use a wire stripping tool to remove insulation from the end of each conductor and/or to apply to the end of each conductor a terminal that is compatible with existing hardware.
The easiest and least expensive termination for the novice customer to deal with is just the simple insulated conductor. This eliminates the need for a wire stripping tool and/or the need to apply a terminal to the conductor. So, a connector that permits the use of this type of termination is highly desirable. However, because there are tens of millions of households where telephone wiring and telephones are already in place, it is also very important for the connector to be sufficiently versatile to permit interconnection with bare-ended conductors and terminal terminated conductors.